“Beautiful” and “hard to read”: Designers react to Apple’s liquid glass update
Apple’s translucent design Now developers can use the iOS 26 update, called Liquid Glass, to book a public beta for next month. Refresh – Apple’s first major interface overhaul in 10 years – makes app icons, buttons, menus and pop-ups look like they are made of frosted glass with blurred background colors.
Changes to the scanning software are not only available for iPhones. This glassy look (sucked by the operating system in Vision Professional headphones) will eventually launch a suite of Apple devices, from smartwatches to iPads.
Provided by Apple
Many design-focused developers were impressed by this after Monday’s WWDC 2025 keynote, but there was an ongoing question about how this translucent look affected user readability.
“It’s hard to read something,” said Allan Yu, a product designer who currently builds the output of a workplace messaging application. “Mainly because I think they’re too transparent.” Yu suggests bumping blur or adjusting the background to make the screen design more readable.
“Similar to the first beta of iOS 7, we’ve seen so far the edges are rough and may tend to be dispersed or challenging, especially for users with visual impairment,” says Iteration’s co-founder Josh Puckett, which helps launch the design. Still, based on Apple’s past accessibility features, Puket is optimistic, and readability will increase over time.
Serhii Popov, the company behind Cleanmymac applications, design-first software engineer for MacPaw, was curious to see how the new operating system looks on a Mac in bright light situations, in which glare has affected visibility. But overall, Popov feels like Apple’s “really fresh” look. “I think that will make everything look bigger and make you more comfortable reading or interacting with the UI,” Popov said. For him, the new design and updates look particularly stylish on the iPad.
Apart from the readability issue, some designers’ first impression is that this new look may unnecessarily distract the user.
“It’s a very impressive effect from a technical point of view. The time and effort I spent mimicking the refraction and dispersion of light is so high,” said Adam Whitcroft, a designer at Owner.com, which is the restaurant’s app and website. “However, sadly, I haven’t seen an example of it complementing the broader context it presents.” Whitcroft notes that visually disperses the dispersion and refraction of the stratified application, especially when the user interface is changing the layout. “If you design a UI that takes the eye’s attention away from the wider environment, you’re on the wrong path,” he said.
